For what it’s worth, I don’t really believe that we have a real shortage of vocations. I think in the West we do a good job in discouraging them, although I know some diocese have seminaries that are packed!
That is not the case in the Diocese of Cleveland. This year we only ordained three priests. Three. Two of those came from St. Francis DeSales church. In fact, for the past couple of years, if you were to look at the classes of new priests, you would see the home parish of St. Francis DeSales come up quite a bit. I don’t know what they’re doing right there, but it sure has paid of in an abundance of priestly vocations!
My church, on the other hand, with a K-8 school and a preschool, hasn’t churned out a seminarian in decades. It boggles the mind. How can they have young minds open to them for 8+ years, for 6 hours or more a day and not inspire a single solitary vocation is just amazing to me. I have mentioned before they certainly seem to go out of their way to discourage them. The acceptance of young ladies at the altar certainly fills up the spaces a young man could fill and thus limits the young man’s exposure to a possible vocation. The silly letter they send the incoming 9th graders that their services are no longer needed as altar servers is also a good way to keep a young man away from his possible vocation. After all, if the high school guys continued to serve into high school, we wouldn’t have as much room for the giggly little 5th grade girls that want to sign up now would we!!?
I found out this week that the opportunities for service will be cut even more. Many of you remember the stories about the pot growing priest in Barberton, Ohio? Well, our associate pastor is going to be moved to that parish – his first big gig as THE pastor. I wish him well. Our pastor, who seems to have one foot on retirement and the other on a banana peel has decided to make some changes. The biggest change is that there will no longer be two daily masses, one in the morning and one at night. Entirely understandable. However, rather than pick one, either the well attended 8:00 a.m. mass, or the after work 5:30 p.m. mass, he has decided to disenfranchise both groups and go for a 10:00 a.m. mass. That way its smack dab in the middle of the morning when no one can come! Of course our funerals are always at 10:00 a.m., so that way if he has a funeral, he only has to do that mass. I always thought priests felt that saying mass was a privilege?
Anyway, we have a parish business manager, a finance committee, a secretary, tons of volunteers who work in the rectory, and a principal for the school. All this, we were told, was to free up the priest, to minister to the flock. Somehow I’m not feeling very ministered.
I remembered Father Tucker’s post about a day in his life. Sounds like a full day. I was impressed that he also ran the wedding rehearsals because in my parish we also have “wedding coordinators” that do that. I’m one of them. Sigh…
Calvin just got back from the Steubenville Youth conference where the priests were not only willing to drop everything to hear a confession, but could also play a wicked game of Frisbee. At least he has that exposure. He doesn’t get this doing less with less mentality and frankly, as a woman in a vocation with 5 kids and a husband in a business coming up in the business cycle, neither do I.
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